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Modern Warfare 3: The PC Interview

We recently had a chance to sit down with Infinity Ward's main PR guru, Robert Bowling. Our topic of discussion? The PC version of Modern Warfare 3, and all that it entails. In this frank discussion Robert shared with us information on the new system specs (higher than before), the improved cheat detection, the choice to return to dedicated servers, and a whole lot more. If you're a PC gamer who is interested in Modern Warfare 3, this is the interview for you.

GameSpy: What sort of connection options are PC gamers going to have? Are they going to have the full server browser as well as matchmaking?

Robert Bowling: Yeah, so in Modern Warfare 3 you have the matchmaking that we introduced in MW2 so you have the party system, the lobby system, all that stuff. That is standard fare for it, but you also have a server browser so you can search, browse, filter, rate, and favorite dedicated servers or set up your own dedicated server so you have full control over ban lists, game setup rules, all that stuff that we know our PC players said they wanted coming out of Modern Warfare 2.

GameSpy: With the server browser, are you going to be able to sort by region or is it ping based?

Robert Bowling: Right now I think it's just ping based.

GameSpy: Have you made any changes to the matchmaking algorithms this time around?

"...we took a ton of feedback coming out of Modern Warfare 2 on how we could optimize matchmaking..."

Robert Bowling: Yeah we have. We always do a lot of work in that, especially speaking specifically to Australian gamers, we took a ton of feedback coming out of Modern Warfare 2 on how we could optimize matchmaking for local regions like what it prioritizes, because you can't prioritize across the board, saying this is how matchmaking works for everybody. That inherently isn't fair because everyone doesn't have the same sort of connection. An Australian player playing with a US player isn't the same as a US player connecting with a US player.
So we've changed the way things are prioritized so it's not just based on ping. It should allow people in Australia or another country to have a better experience, rather than being at the will of one American host who comes in and takes over everything.

GameSpy: Sure. Now you mentioned there that users can set up their own dedicated servers. Will they still be ranked servers or are they unranked?

Robert Bowling: That's something that hasn't been decided yet. It's something that we're working out.

GameSpy: It's kind of a big deal for you guys to go back to a dedicated server model after Modern Warfare 2's system. Can you give us some kind of insight in the decision making process that went behind that? Were there a lot of discussions around this choice?

Robert Bowling: There were. I mean, in every aspect of Modern Warfare 3 it was about looking at our player feedback, what they wanted. More importantly, in every aspect from gameplay to dedicated servers, it was about giving more options, more control to our players, to have the experience that they want to have. So coming out of Modern Warfare 2 it was pretty clear what our PC audience was looking for and what direction they wanted us to go in. The conversation was pretty straight forward because we knew what they wanted and we wanted to execute on that.

New graphical effects means slightly higher systerm requirements.

GameSpy: Was part of the decision to go with the Modern Warfare 2's model to do with piracy? What was the driving force behind removing dedicated servers?

Robert Bowling: In Modern Warfare 2 it was multiple things. As our first time going to Steam, it was our first time doing a lot of different things like adding in the matchmaking. It was about trying to control the experience ourselves, doing things like VAC and introducing things that we thought would be the first step in improving the experience overall. We wanted to unify the experience across every platform but it was always intended to be the first step in a series in what IWNet would become. So we looked at how that performed and regretfully there were a lot of things that it didn't achieve that we wanted it to achieve. Things like making it as secure as it can be - Modern Warfare 2 had a lot of problems with cheating and hacking, especially on the PC, that VAC didn't fully take care of. As a result we've done a lot of work on Modern Warfare 3 on the back end. We are still using VAC in Steam but in addition to that we've done much more work on the backend, locking down our stuff to make it more secure, to make sure we have more flexibility on addressing things like that ourselves rather than just relying on some third party anti-cheat program.

Head to the next page to read about the game's cheat protection, mod support and system requirements.